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Thursday, October 16, 2014

You heard right, milk removal from your breasts with your own hand
is a skill every lactating woman would benefit from learning. In fact, hand
expression in conjunction with pumping can increase output for pumping moms,
yet teaching the skill is neglected on many maternity wards.

I’m not sure when we started to assume that our own handy
work wouldn’t be sufficient and obsessed about finding the right pump for milk
expression. It seems that a first-time mom is required to add an electric
breast pump to her baby registry if she decided on breastfeeding, along with
the starter bottle set just in case.

Just in case of…Can you think of a few reasons that require
you to have an electric breast pump? I can too, but except
for the case of a working mom most of them are very unlikely, like a
very premature baby, being separated from baby for a longer period of time, or feeding issues that prevent
latching. For most of those rare events, a mom would be able to rent or borrow
a hospital grade pump, the most efficient, multi-user, and pricey item on the
product list of manufacturers. Working moms and exclusive pumping moms may
benefit from the use of a good electric pump, but being efficient in hand
expression can only be of advantage to pumping moms as well. Yes, it’s work and
you won’t be able to check Facebook while doing it, but I can come up with one
advantage for every digit on my hands that may persuade you to give hand
expression a try.

Hand expression is cheap – it costs you only the soap and water you use to wash your hands.

Hand expression is always available provided you have a free hand or someone to lend you a hand. Imagine you pumped a bottle for baby and went to an event without lugging the pump because the carrying tote didn’t coordinate with your gorgeous dress and there’s no place to store it. You start to feel painfully engorged and need to remove some milk for comfort. Thank goodness you know how to hand express and the ladies’ room is just around the corner! Five minutes, and you’re back at the party!

Hand expression doesn’t require electricity - even better, you increase your own energy expenditure. I certainly wouldn’t mind burning some extra calories. You can express anywhere, no need to look for an outlet and chair.

Hand expression, more specifically breast compression, can help pumping moms to effectively drain the breast and increase output, especially if practiced in the early days.

Supplies are minimal and cleaning is fast. You need a dish to catch the milk if desired, otherwise the sink, ground, or a towel will do. No extra aftercare is required.

You learn the technique you respond best to and get to know your breasts – it’s not a one-fits-all approach, like the suction of a pump, ­-- and if there are issues or lumps you will know.

It’s faster than a pump once you are proficient. More mommy time? Why, thank you!

Hand expression can help while nursing to remove plugged ducts and aids in treatment of mastitis much better than a pump, second only to baby.

In NOT buying an affordable, single user pump (which can’t be resold) for occasional use, you reduce electric waste and preserve resources. Breastfeeding rates are increasing and at this rate we may have underused pumps orbiting the earth as space trash soon. You get my point.

Working with your hands increases confidence in your body and yourself. Much more so than comparing yourself to a dairy cow.

Now that you are intrigued to try, check out this video to get some pointers on technique and start practicing. It will take
time to learn, so don’t be discouraged.

Do you see some results? High five!

Please share your experience with hand expression, special
tricks, or situations where it helped you in a comment below.

Sunday, September 28, 2014

I will admit
that I had a slightly skewed view before I even saw this movie. A couple of friends had posted that they had
seen it and were both disappointed.
Always one to keep an open mind, I thought to myself, “it can’t be THAT
bad”. I was hoping that my friends were
wrong and that once I saw it I would be excited and think that we could save
the world with breastfeeding and then chest bump all of my breastfeeding girlfriends.

I put the
DVD in my laptop and tell my husband that I am doing “school work” and need to
be left alone. I start the movie, and
the scene opens to a woman at her baby shower opening gifts of breastfeeding
related paraphernalia. Not exactly
attention-grabbing as a high speed chase, but I keep watching. The film follows 6-7 women on their
breastfeeding journeys. Following them
from about the time they are 7 months pregnant through the first year of the
baby’s life, each woman has a unique, yet often similar story of breastfeeding. Almost
all of the women face hurdles that are, unfortunately, all too commonly found
in America. Some of the challenges these women face
include: a late-term preemie, an unexpected
c-section, a baby that has problems latching, and a tongue and lip tie. One thing that all of these women have in
common was that they all said they wanted to breastfeed when they were
pregnant. All of these issues, if
addressed by a knowledgeable professional with lactation training, can be
remedied and breastfeeding goals can be met.

Women often
have ingrained in them that breastfeeding is “natural”, “instinctive”, and “what
the breasts were made for”. While all of
this is, in fact, true many women still decide breastfeeding is not for them
and switch to artificial baby milk. Why
are so many women starting out saying they want to breastfeed and then not
following through? Breastmilk provides a great insight into the perceptions that women
have about breastfeeding and why they switch.
What this movie had the capacity to do, but failed miserably, is to
educate people about breastfeeding. Breastmilk essentially educates people
about the challenges of breastfeeding, not the success stories and how
challenges can be overcome. In fact,
only one of the moms was still breastfeeding when her baby turned a year
old. Almost all of the others started
some type of supplementation, if not a full transition to formula, prior to the
baby turning 6 months. I want to take
this opportunity to dispel some of the myths and misinformation presented in
the movie.

Karin was
told that her 36 weeker, born just a few weeks early and weighing in at nearly
6 pounds needed human milk fortifier.
FACT: Preemies can latch on to
the breast and get what they need VERY early on – even prior to 36 weeks. There’s no need for any sort of fortifier
(read: formula) unless it’s medically
necessary, for example, galactosemia which is a rare condition, or very low
birth weight preemies under approximately 3 pounds, or infants with phenylketonuria. In fact, introducing foreign substances to a
baby (including formula) can sometimes harm the baby as it increases the risk
for necrotizing enterocolitis (one of the most common and serious intestinal
diseases among preemies) versus breastmilk which contains immunological
properties that can help protect preterm infants.

Karin also
believed that breastfed babies gain weight more slowly in the beginning and
then speed up their weight gain as they are older.FACT:The opposite is true.Breastfed
babies often gain weight quickly in the first 3-4 months and then slow
down.

Colleen is a
biologist and she wants her baby to latch on his own as it’s an instinctive,
innate behavior that he can do without any assistance. Yes!
This is true – thank you, Colleen!
Unfortunately what happens with Colleen is that she has a bit of an
impatient and assertive nurse who wants the crying baby to hurry up and latch
on. So while Colleen watches her baby
grab on to her breast, even though he’s not sucking, the nurse insists on
helping her and takes the baby’s head and tries to help position him to latch
on. FACT: Babies can and will latch on without any
help from anyone. Skin-to-skin
immediately after birth will help facilitate this instinct known as the breast
crawl, where the baby is searching for the breast and is able to find it and begin
nursing. It may not necessarily be a
perfect latch as baby has to learn how to perfect his or her technique, but he
can latch on and suck – two instincts that babies are born with.

Colleen’s
baby is also diagnosed with a lip and tongue tie. Ties are common in breastfeeding and can
cause a lot of barriers to breastfeeding success if not diagnosed and
corrected. They restrict movement which
creates problems with breastfeeding as the baby’s tongue cannot reach the top
of his or her mouth. The baby cannot
get a good latch at the breast and causes pain to the mother. Babies who have ties also sometimes do not
gain weight as well due to their inefficient sucking ability. The movie actually does a good explanation
of a tongue and lip tie and how they affect breastfeeding. If only they had included more of these
teaching moments, the movie would have been much better.

Only one mom
was still breastfeeding at one year. She
had attended a breastfeeding support group meeting with her baby to get
reassurance from other moms (it’s unclear from the movie if she attended more
than one meeting). However, this mom did
start pumping prior to her baby being born as she was concerned about her milk
supply. Her pumping likely caused her to
have contractions and she went into labor that night. A lot of moms believe that nipple stimulation
can help with supply and/or to prepare the breasts for breastfeeding. FACT:
This is absolutely not true and as shown in the movie may cause a mom to
start contracting and go into labor. A
mom-to-be does not need to prepare her breasts for breastfeeding and any sort
of artificial nipple stimulation is discouraged.

One of the
mothers in the movie also was faced with an unexpected c-section delivery. After the delivery, she says she felt very
out of it and was not comfortable holding or feeding her baby. What many women don’t realize, especially
first time moms, is that the delivery can affect breastfeeding. In the movie, it’s obvious how the delivery
affected the young mother, but moms who have long labors and/or may have
received extra fluids can also be very much affected when it comes to latching
their baby to the breast. Extra fluids
may cause water retention which in turn may cause issues with a baby being able
to latch on. The extra fluids may also cause a delay from
the transition of colostrum to mature milk.
A procedure known as reverse pressure softening can help with extra
water retention in order to help the baby latch on. And regarding the mature milk, the mom just
needs to understand that a couple of extra days may be needed before she has
her mature milk.

The movie
went on to interview a family who many breastfeeding moms likely would not be
able to relate to. It is this family that
was used as an example of what full-term breastfeeding looks like. That is, the mom was still nursing her
toddler who was probably between 2 and 3 years old. The American Academy of Pediatrics
recommendation is that “exclusive breastfeeding for about the first six months
of a baby's life, followed by breastfeeding in combination with the
introduction of complementary foods until at least 12 months of age, and
continuation of breastfeeding for as long as mutually desired by mother and
baby”. The World Health Organization’s
recommendation on breastfeeding duration is, “Exclusive breastfeeding is
recommended up to 6 months of age, with continued breastfeeding along with
appropriate complementary foods up to two years of age or beyond”.

There are a
lot of moms that nurse past one year and to use a couple who most viewers would
not be able to connect with is doing a disservice to the idea of breastfeeding
into toddlerhood.

While this
movie IS an accurate representation of a typical American mom’s breastfeeding
journey, it leaves much to be desired in educating the audience on
breastfeeding. Not only is it missing an opportunity to
educate moms, but it also lacks focus and a purpose. I turned off my laptop feeling a bit
confused and disappointed in a movie that I had such high hopes for.

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

A few months ago as the
board of directors were tossing around the idea of a Mom2Mom blog, we
unanimously decided to write our first post about mommy wars. What better way
to engage with the community than by addressing a universal challenge we all
have faced? Well, a few of the board members, including myself, have sat down
to write that post and each of us have come up
blank! None of us have been able to put together the right collection of words
to express how we feel.

The inability to write
about mommy wars from the perspective of a Mom2Mom member is not due to a lack
of experience with this thing. Tell me who can become a mother and wholly
escape it? I think our silence comes instead from a desire to stay clear of the
competition and judgement that define this "war". In Mom2Mom we have
a hugely diverse community of women and families. Some of us are active duty,
some work part time, and others stay at home. Some of us have breastfed for
days and others years. Some of us pump, some supplement, others sns feed, and
some tandem nurse! What makes our community rich, vibrant, and unique is this
very set of differences. And I believe that it is through these differences
that we are able to help each other see the other side of issues and pull
through our toughest challenges.

I hate to sound trite or
aggressively sing the virtues of Mom2Mom but the fact of the matter is that I
am so proud of this community and it's members. Breastfeeding is an inherently
hot topic but in our Facebook group and at our Breastfeeding Cafe discussions
there is rarely a hostile moment. It seems that there is a breastfeeding
paradise of knowledge and experience right here in the KMC and we are all
invited to take part!

So instead of writing
about how much mommy wars frustrate me or how it's ruining my life, I'd like to
take this post in a different direction. I'd like to invite you - our members,
readers, and supporters - to tell us one thing you've learned from another
mother. Please leave us a comment below with your story and perhaps you will
inspire someone else today!

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About Me

M2M KMC recognizes the difficulties that the military life imposes on new mothers, and strives to help mothers reach their personal breastfeeding goals despite these difficulties. We connect new or expectant mothers with Peer Mentors, who are volunteers who have successfully breastfed at least one child and who have been trained by M2M KMC to provide advice, moral support, and guidance to help improve breastfeeding rates.
We also serve the breastfeeding community in the KMC by hosting a weekly Breastfeeding Cafe every Wednesday 10:00 - 12:00 in the Ramstein Youth Center unless otherwise advertised. The Cafe has free tea, coffee and something to nibble on, and is open to all who have access to Ramstein Airbase. Come when you can, leave when you need to. We look forward to meeting you!